The encyclopedic novel is a genre of complex literary fiction which incorporates elements across a wide range of scientific, academic, and literary subjects. The concept was popularised by Edward Mendelson in criticism of Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, defined as an encyclopedia-like attempt to "render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture, while identifying the ideological perspectives from which that culture shapes and interprets its knowledge".[2] In more general terms, the encyclopedic novel is a long, complex work of fiction that incorporates extensive information (which is sometimes fictional itself), often from specialized disciplines of science and the humanities.[3] Mendelson's essays examine the encyclopedic tendency in the history of literature, considering the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Faust, and Moby-Dick, with an emphasis on the modern Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. Commonly cited examples of encyclopedic novels in the postmodern period include, in addition to Pynchon, Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations (1991), David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996), and Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997).[4] Other literary critics have explored the concept since, attempting to understand the function and effect of "encyclopedic" narratives, and coining the related terms systems novel[5] and maximalist novel.[6]
^Mendelson, Edward (December 1976). "Encyclopedic Narrative: From Dante to Pynchon". MLN. 91 (6): 1267–1275. doi:10.2307/2907136. JSTOR2907136.
^Mendelson, "Encyclopedic Narrative", 1269. Quoted in Herman.
^Burn, Stephen J. Abstract."At the edges of perception": William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David Foster Wallace. 2001, doctoral thesis, Durham University.
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